Monday, April 30, 2007

Why Dean wants media re-regulation

Excellent column by George Will illustrating how totalitarian and condescending the left truly is. Excerpts follow (though read the whole thing, as it's not long but is very informative):

Some illiberal liberals are trying to restore the luridly misnamed Fairness Doctrine, which until 1987 required broadcasters to devote a reasonable amount of time to presenting fairly each side of a controversial issue. The government was empowered to decide how many sides there were, how much time was reasonable and what was fair.

By trying to again empower the government to regulate broadcasting, illiberals reveal their lack of confidence in their ability to compete in the marketplace of ideas, and their disdain for consumer sovereignty—and hence for the public.

The illiberals' transparent, and often proclaimed, objective is to silence talk radio. Liberals strenuously and unsuccessfully attempted to compete in that medium—witness the anemia of their Air America. Talk radio barely existed in 1980, when there were fewer than 100 talk shows nationwide. The Fairness Doctrine was scrapped in 1987, and today more than 1,400 stations are entirely devoted to talk formats. Conservatives dominate talk radio—although no more thoroughly than liberals dominate Hollywood, academia and much of the mainstream media.

(Examples of historical abuse of the Fairness Doctrine here.)...

Bill Ruder, a member of Kennedy's subcabinet, said: "Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters in the hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." The Nixon administration frequently threatened the three networks and individual stations with expensive license challenges under the Fairness Doctrine. (See? Bipartisan abuse. - Ed.)...Adam Thierer, writing in the City Journal, notes that today's "media cornucopia" has made America "as information-rich as any society in history." In addition to the Internet's uncountable sources of information, there are 14,000 radio stations—twice as many as in 1970—and satellite radio has nearly 14 million subscribers. Eighty-seven percent of households have either cable or satellite television with more than 500 channels to choose from. There are more than 19,000 magazines (up more than 5,000 since 1993). Thierer says, consider a black lesbian feminist who hunts and likes country music:

"Would the 'mainstream media' of 25 years ago represented any of her interests? Unlikely. Today, though, this woman can program her TiVo to record her favorite shows on Black Entertainment Television, Logo (a gay/lesbian-oriented cable channel), Oxygen (female-targeted programming), the Outdoor Life Network and Country Music Television."

Some of today's illiberals say that media abundance, not scarcity, justifies the Fairness Doctrine: Americans, the poor dears, are bewildered by too many choices. And the plenitude of information sources disperses "the national campfire," the cozy communitarian experience of the good old days (for liberals), when everyone gathered around—and was dependent on—ABC, NBC and CBS.

"I believe we need to re-regulate the media," says Howard Dean. Such illiberals argue that the paucity of liberal successes in today's radio competition—and the success of Fox News—somehow represent "market failure." That is the regularly recurring, all-purpose rationale for government intervention in markets. Market failure is defined as consumers' not buying what liberals are selling.

Then again, markets aren't exactly the left's cup of tea. That whole "supply and demand" thingy elicits a deer-in-headlights look from the vast majority of leftards.

As I've asserted and demonstrated on many occasions, liberals think that you are too stupid to run your own lives and that you need their brilliance (which, of course, you're too stupid to recognize or appreciate) to get you through your menial lives.

About Me

I am not conservative or Republican. I am a "neo-libertarian." It’s more logically consistent than conservatism and liberalism.
Liberals are not evil; however, their ideology has proven to be a demonstrable failure and incredibly harmful when administered on the body politic.
I have lived in the South all of my life. While I'd love to travel, I don't want to live anywhere else. Though I currently live near Jacksonville, FL, I call Memphis home (lived there most of my life). I'm a Florida State University Seminole, through and through.
All viewpoints are welcome on my blog. However, if I ban you or edit/delete your comments, it's because I found you to be offensive, repulsive, or otherwise useless. My world, my rules. Deal with it, or beat it.
Finally, I had a happy childhood, so my worldview has NOT been "warped" by a lousy upbringing. Quite the contrary: I have been blessed, and my outlook has been molded accordingly. I won't apologize for having grown up in a loving, middle-class family.